DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/9CNJ-ZT47
Defense Date
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
History
First Advisor
John Kneebone
Abstract
The experiences of Southern women during the American Civil War are often represented through the publication of their journals, diaries, and memoirs. This project consists of the transcription and annotation of the journal of Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Maxwell Alsop Wynne, written from March 4, 1862, through March 20, 1878. During her most intense period of writing from 1862 to 1866, Lizzie Alsop recorded the effects of the American Civil War on an extensive network of friends and family in the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, and at her home in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Lizzie’s journal offers valuable insight into the wartime politicization of adolescent women, courtship, religion, the changing relationship between enslaved African Americans and slave-owners, the effect of Union occupation on Southern civilians, and the social ties among family and friends during and after the war. The journal is among the Wynne Family Papers at the Virginia Historical Society (Mss1 W9927 a) and recorded in nine blank books. Transcribed for the first time in its entirety, Lizzie’s journals add her voice to the relatively small number of records left by female adolescents describing the dramatic experiences at the epicenter of civil war and growth into womanhood in its aftermath.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
December 2013